Chiaia, Maria Ellen
THE MYSTERY OF MEETING: CREATIVE EMERGENCE, RELATIONSHIP AND HEALING
Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Volume 12, Number 2, 2003
KEY WORDS: transindividual field, relational field, numinous, countertransference, transference, field, co-transference, unio mystica, encounter, meeting, creation, emergence, therapeutic depression, clinical example, menopause, progressive, regressive, alchemy, love, hate, rage, despair, joy.
ABSTRACT: This article discusses shared relational experiences and meetings that occur between the therapist and sandplayer. The author stresses the importance of these experiences including those of love and hate being acknowledged and experienced between the sandplayer and therapist and not just witnessed in the sand. She summarizes her doctoral research where she and her co-researcher coined the term “transindividual field.” The author uses images from alchemy, theoretical ideas from Jung and other analytic and psychoanalytic writers to describe the transindividual field. The author expands the theoretical construct of the experience of the Self and includes its occurrence in the transindividual field. The article is interspersed with clinical examples. The author states that these co-transference experiences occur in and through the transindividual field and that from this field creative emergence and healing can occur.